Betty Smith (born Elisabeth Lillian Wehner; December 15, 1896 – January 17, 1972) was an American playwright and novelist, who wrote the 1943 bestseller A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Four years later, at age 18, endeavoring to further her education, she discovered she could attend Girls' High School in Brooklyn during the day while, at the same time, work a night job in Manhattan.

But after two years of this rigorous schedule, she quit school because a well paying job she had accepted with the United States Postal Service required her to work days.

It was at the settlement house in 1917 that she met her future first husband, George H. E. Smith, the coach of her debate team and a fellow German-American, whose family name had been changed during WWI from Schmidt.

[10] It is claimed by some it was likely at the Jackson Street Settlement House, rather than near her apartment, that the tree grew which gave name to her best-known novel,[11] but this assertion is unsubstantiated.

[12] During the couple's extended stay in Ann Arbor, Smith gave birth to two girls and then waited until they were in school before endeavoring to complete her education.

She and her younger brother Willie regularly attended Saturday matinees at Brooklyn theaters for ten cents each, which allowed them to stand in the gallery.

[15] At the University of Michigan, Smith audited a number of journalism and playwriting courses and was a student in some of the classes of Professor Kenneth Thorpe Rowe.

Under the guidance of Rowe, she wrote several plays, including the three-act Jonica Starrs, a story of adultery and the break-up of a marriage.

Smith's life reached a turning point in 1931 when she won the University of Michigan's Avery Hopwood Award for her full length play Francie Nolan, [17] which she later re-titled Becomes A Woman when she applied for copyright.

[18][19] With the award, Smith received $1,000[20][21] a considerable amount of money in the early 1930s, but, perhaps more importantly, public attention for her work.

[22] With the conferring of the Hopwood Award, Smith was invited to study drama at Yale University, where, under the tutelage of the renowned teacher George Pierce Baker, she wrote several plays during her two-year fellowship.

With the end of her drama studies at Yale, Smith and her children returned to live briefly in her mother's house in Woodhaven, Queens.

In May 1936, she and three other Federal Theatre Project members, including Bob Finch, were shifted to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to participate in regional theater activities.

It was in Chapel Hill that Smith finally found a place to call home, and despite continuing struggles with money, she began to write more earnestly.

Encouraged by her longtime friend, playwright Bob Finch, as well as her writing group, she turned her eye toward a milieu with which she was familiar: the tenements and streets of Brooklyn.

Working with Harper editors Smith substantially revised the novel, trimming characters, dialogue, and scenes, while selectively adding others.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn starred James Dunn, Dorothy McGuire, Joan Blondell, and Peggy Ann Garner, who won a Special Academy Award for Outstanding Child Actress of 1945.

James Dunn's performance as Johnny Nolan, Francie's father, won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Hundreds of works ended up in the hands and hearts of servicemen, but reportedly "the most popular book of all seems to have been A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

In the early 1950s, Smith teamed with George Abbott to write the book for the 1951 musical adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Set in the tenements of 1920s Brooklyn, the novel presents a realistic portrayal of young adults who seek a brighter future.

By June 1951, the marriage, which produced no children, was in trouble, and Smith cited incompatibility as a reason to divorce, noting they "had nothing at all in common".

Six years later, in 1957, in Chapel Hill, at the age of 61, she married Robert Voris Finch, a longtime friend and companion she had known since her studies at Yale University.